Congress to America: Look, We Did Something!

By the Editors -
Dec 11, 2013

It’s hard to imagine how something
as pipsqueak as an $85 billion, two-year budget deal could be so
consequential. Yet the agreement struck yesterday could mark the
end of paralyzing budget politics, avoid another government
shutdown, remove Washington as a roadblock to recovery and help
spur economic growth.

Aside from the usual partisan grumbling, the biggest
criticism is that the deal is insufficiently ambitious. This
misses the point: The great virtue of the agreement, which
includes genuine if minor reforms, is that it shows how simple
budget agreements can be when the two sides set their minds to
it.

Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican
Representative Paul Ryan, chairmen of their respective budget
committees, negotiated in private for weeks without grandiose
floor speeches or dramatic denunciations of the other’s lack of
good faith.

The package, which awaits House and Senate votes, is tiny
in the larger context of a $17 trillion economy. Both parties
also sidestepped their larger ambitions -- cutting entitlement
programs (which Republicans want) and raising taxes on the rich
(which Democrats favor).

On the plus side, the deal calls for modestly stimulative
spending increases in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, President Barack Obama would get a $45 billion kitty he can direct toward areas
that have endured painful cuts, such as scientific research,
public-works spending and Head Start. The Murray-Ryan deal also
smartly replaces about $60 billion of the mindless, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration due to take effect
over the next two years.

To help offset the new spending, the agreement would drum
up $20 billion by raising the fees passengers pay for airline
security, increasing federal workers’ pension contributions and
raising the premiums companies pay the government to guarantee
pensions.

On the negative side, the deal doesn’t extend emergency
unemployment benefits, abandoning the plight of the long-term
jobless in an attempt to attract support from deficit hawks. And
it ignores the U.S.’s biggest fiscal problems, especially the
huge unfunded health-care and retirement obligations for the
elderly. Even the claim that this agreement reduces the deficit
is a fudge factor: It rests on an extension of a 2 percent cut
in payments to Medicare providers in 2021 and 2022 -- eons away
in congressional time.

As with all budget agreements, this one has features both
sides will hate, and they’ve already started saying so. Many Tea
Party-backed Republicans refuse to support the plan because the
new spending comes from breaking budget caps Congress agreed to
in 2011. Some Democrats are just as unhappy about not extending
unemployment benefits and cutting government pensions.

To those who would vote the agreement down, Ryan had this
message: “In divided government, you don’t always get what you
want.” Coming from the author of past budget manifestos calling
on Republicans to hold out for radical entitlement and tax cuts,
that is an extraordinary statement.

No, this deal won’t put the U.S. on a path to long-term
fiscal stability. Yet it does avoid another government shutdown
and end the budget wars for two years. In this Congress, that’s
no small achievement.